BAKU: French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna urged Azerbaijan on Thursday to remove a newly installed checkpoint on the road linking Armenia to the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, on the first leg of a delicate trip to both countries.
Her comments in Baku drew a sharp retort from her Azerbaijani counterpart that highlighted the sensitivities of her mission.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought two wars in the past three decades over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but populated mainly by ethnic Armenians and run by a separatist administration.
Azerbaijan set up a new checkpoint on Sunday on the road to Karabakh, the Lachin corridor, in a move that Armenia called a gross violation of a 2020 ceasefire between the two countries and that has also drawn concern from the United States.
"We deplore the unilateral measures taken by Azerbaijan at the start of the Lachin corridor," Colonna told a joint news conference with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov. "Freedom of movement in the corridor is essential to re-establish trust."
Bayramov, in response, said Azerbaijan had been saying for the past 2-1/2 years that Armenia had been using the route to transfer weapons and fighters to Karabakh, "but I don't remember France making any statement against Armenia".
BLOCKADE
The appearance of the checkpoint marked a sharp escalation in a months-long blockade of Karabakh that began in December, when Azerbaijani civilians identifying themselves as environmental activists shut down the road to traffic.
Ethnic Armenians in Karabakh have complained of a humanitarian crisis, while Armenia itself has expressed mounting frustration with the failure of Russian peacekeepers to keep the road open. Russia said on Wednesday it had appointed a new head of its peacekeeping force.
Separately, the Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused France and the United States of trying to undermine Russia's traditional role as a mediator in the Karabakh conflict.
Colonna, who was heading later to Armenia, rejected a reporter's suggestion that France was biased against Azerbaijan, saying its only interest was to secure peace.
She said reopening the Lachin corridor was both a point of international law and a question of restoring trust between the two sides.
"If you want to nourish the peace process, yes we need gestures of a kind that can help rebuild confidence," she said.
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